5. Raising a Big Family

William and Phoebe had to work hard to raise their growing family. Besides working on the railway section for a living, Will had a good-sized garden so his family could have plenty of vegetables through the winter. He had fruit trees too, and the shooting rights over a farm that permitted him to shoot rabbits, partridges, and pheasants. He raised rabbits and geese and he rented what was called an allotment where he grew wheat, harvested it, then took it to the mill to be ground into flour.

He kept learning things from his experiences and found out that when he tried new things he could be successful. “Dad often hired out to the better-off people to supplement his income,” says Albert. “He would be called to do many things for them like take honey from their hives.

“The hives were made by twisting cords of straw and fastening them together to look like a dome. He smoked a pipe, and he had learned that if he lit up his pipe and got it going well he could tame even the worst bees into submission.

“So to take honey he would put on his bandana handkerchief so it would hang from under his hat and protect his neck from bees crawling down it. After steaming up his pipe to a good flow of smoke he would stoop down with a corner of his handkerchief over the bowl of his pipe and blow a number of smoke puffs into the hive entrance, then after a few seconds pause he could turn the hive over and cut out a quantity of honey into a bowl or pan.”

He got the knack of doing this, and soon people began asking him to take the honey from their hives for them. Many became regular customers, even the farmer’s wife. After paying him they would give him some honey for the children, and in the fall a nice piece of honey as a bonus. When she was elderly the farmer’s widow had so much confidence in Will that she even depended on him and the maid to carry her up the stairs to her bedroom at night.1

Phoebe made just about all the clothes the children wore. “She had a sewing machine that she had to turn [the handle] once around to make a stitch,” says Albert. “Later some [machines]came out that was geared up to make three or four stitches on one revolution. How well I remember that little sewing machine!”

Will became well known for being able to do grafting of trees and was called upon by his neighbors to help them transform their trees into newer or more desirable varieties. He and his brothers would also be hired to cut a field of hay.

There were no mowing machines in those days so the men would go around and around the field following one another swinging a sickle with each step forward. Later the women would toss the hay over to help it dry. They would do that each day until it was ready to rake. They used wooden rakes with heads about three feet wide, and all the teeth were wooden pegs. Everyone in the family learned how to do his or her part to help make a living.

“In those days matches were hardly known,” says Albert. “When the men folks would find time they would cut slivers from wood long enough that their fingers wouldn’t get burned when they were pushed into the open fire to light them. The striking tip had not yet been invented, and most men carried a small tin box called a tinder box. It contained some scorched rag and a steel instrument and a small piece of flint. They would strike the steel on the flint to shower sparks onto the rag. Then when it started to smolder they would blow it until it fanned into flame.”

Albert remembers rolling quills. They called them “spills.” They were made by cutting strips of paper about an inch wide, then after moistening the thumb and forefinger and pinching one corner, a strip could be rolled into a spiral. This was easier than cutting wood slivers to push into the fire. Spills were also used to light kerosene lamps, and other needful things.

On weekday mornings I imagine Phoebe getting her children fed and on their way to school so she could begin her housework. The children may have had a little time to play on the way, or to investigate things that caught their interest such as a newly-made nest in a blackberry hedge or a tunnel made in the dirt made by some small creature. They were at hom in their surroundings and know the flower, trees, and shrubs of the countryside by name.

Children too young to go to school were sent outside to play, and, if it was winter, they were wrapped in some kind of warm covering then dispensed to the outdoors to play and make up their own adventures. "If they fell down or hurt themselves, they did not run indoors for comfot... they might have running noses and chilblains on hands, feet and ear-tips; but they hardly ever were sick enough to have to stay indoors, and grew sturdy and strong ... hardy in body and spirit... so the system must have suited them."2

Albert says his "first recollection was of playing in the fields with other children close to our homes." Wouldn't you just like to have a peek at what those children were like? Here are two who were neighbors and friends to the White family. They probably walked to school with them, tromped with them through the farmer's field on the way home, and played with them after school. The Mayfields lived next door to the Whites, and Bill White married Elizabeth's sister, Ellen.

How did Phoebe use those wonderful vegetables Will had grown in the garden to prepare their evening meal? We aren’t given those details, but Flora Thompson describes the customary way in which the hamlet women did it:

“About four o’clock, smoke would go up from the chimneys as the fire was made up and the big iron boiler, or the three-legged pot, was slung on the hook of the chimney chain. Everything was cooked in one utensil: the square of bacon amounting to little more than a taste each, cabbage or other green vegetables in one net, potatoes in another, and the roly-poly swathed in a cloth. It sounds a haphazard method... but it answered its purpose, for by carefully timing the putting in of each item and keeping the simmering of the pot well regulated, each item was kept intact and an appetizing meal was produced. The water in which the food had been cooked, the potato parings, and other vegetable trimmings were the pig’s share.”3

On holidays or Sundays if a joint had been roasted, a meat pudding cooked in a basin was served first to take the edge off the appetite. On ordinary days the roly-poly contained fruit, currants, or jam; and was served as a first course for the same purpose.

“When the men came home from work they would find the table spread with a clean whitey-brown cloth, upon which would be knives and two-pronged steel forks with buckhorn handles. The vegetables would then be turned out into big round crockery dishes and the bacon cut into dice...and the whole family would sit down to the chief meal of the day. True, it was seldom that all could find places at the central table; but some of the smaller children could sit upon stools with the seat of a chair for a table, or on the doorstep with their plates on their laps.”4

Milk was a rare luxury, and Albert tells us that they had very little butter as it was too costly so they ate lard on their bread. Many people preferred lard, “especially if it was their own home-made lard flavored with rosemary leaves.”5 This, eaten with any relish that happened to be at hand was the mainstay of most other meals. If there was some roly-poly pudding left, the children might get to eat it on the way to school or for lunch. Fanny remembers, “We were the only ones who couldn’t afford to buy bread off the baker.”

It was the men who worked in the vegetable gardens and allotments, not the women. After supper if it was still light the men would spend time planting or cultivating for an hour or two in their vegetable gardens.

“The energy they brought to their gardening after a hard day’s work in the fields was marvelous. They grudged no effort and seemed never to tire. Often, on Moonlight nights in spring, the solitary fork of some one who had not been able to tear himself away would be heard and the scent of his twitch fire smoke would float in at the windows.”6

The secret of their success, they claimed, was having good soil, plenty of manure from their pigsties, and keeping the soil loosened around the roots of their plants, which they called ‘tickling.’ ‘Just tickling her up a bit,’ they would say.

“Most of the men sang or whistled as they dug or hoed. There was a good deal of outdoor singing in those days. Workmen sang at their... jobs; men with horses and carts sang on the road; the baker, the miller’s man, and the fish hawker sang as they went from door to door; even the doctor and parson on their rounds hummed a tune... people were poorer and had not the comforts, amusements or knowledge we have today; but they were happier.”7

Nearly all the children there had chilblains from the cold and damp, and wet feet always in the winter from playing outside after school until dinner time. They didn’t have galoshes. Fanny says her father was never too tired to give the children what they called a “diddly dumpty” before they went to bed. “In the winter time after they could stand as babies until they were three or four years old, or even older he would charm the chilblains on their feet. While he was rubbing their feet he would say:

‘Charm ‘em, charm ‘em,
Little Cock Robin’s in the barn;
If it does it no good, it’ll do it no harm.
Charm it, charm it—
Run to bed and get and warm ‘em!’

“And we would love him to do that,” Fanny says. “We would run to bed so happy, and it would make us think we would never have the itch of the chilblains. But, of course, they would itch and itch after. He’d do it every night.”

In our day we think nothing of just getting in the car and going where we want to go. In Will and Phoebe’s day “people didn’t visit relatives if it took a train ride to get them there,” Fanny says. “When they were going to Malvern for example, they had to walk quite a long distance to get to the Malvern Wells station, then ride two miles into Malvern. So the children didn’t know their father’s family very well, only by hearing their names mentioned occasionally.”9

But when Will’s mother, Sophia, died, Will went to Hinton on the Green to pay his respects. There was a dividing up of her belongings so He brought back a grandfather clock and a fancy cup and saucer to each of the children that they were allowed to use for Sunday teatimes only.

He was also given a set of pretty pitchers. The largest one was broken one winter when some milk froze in it, but when Fanny was grown, her mother gave her the other two and she prized them highly. Many years later she gave one as a gift to one of her granddaughters.8

The grandfather clock was very ancient. It had only one hand on it that pointed out the quarter, half hour, and hour, and it struck one on the hour. It always kept perfect time.

Will always went to the Wesleyan chapel on Sunday mornings. The children went to Sunday School at 10:00 a.m. and the adults came for a regular meeting at 11:00 a.m. “We thought our dad was tops when we were growing up, as sometimes he would take our hands and skip with us on the way home from church,” says Fanny. In the evening Will and Phoebe also went to a meeting at 6:30 p.m. but the children usually stayed home.

The children don’t remember any harsh words spoken between Will and Phoebe. They were kind to each other and to the children. The older children came home from their jobs in other towns whenever they had a chance so they could be with the family. It was very special when the whole family was together.